


A Beautiful Ache

by Winterstar



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-08 16:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4312230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While at an outdoor café, a car crashes into Peter and Neal. This answers the <a href="http://whitecollarhc.livejournal.com/58251.html?thread=545931#t545931">prompt </a> on the LJ wc hc freak accident fest. It kind of fills it but might not have all the comfort that the prompter wanted. It fills the loss square on my angst bingo card. It also fills the loss of voice square on my hc_bingo card. No beta was harmed, all mistakes are mine and I will try and find them and fix 'em.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Ache

_A hand touches another and Neal Caffrey focuses on the fingers casually draped over his wrist as if they belong there, as if the gesture is natural and acceptable. The touch has never been so intimate, so open, so exposed, so public. The two – Neal Caffrey and Peter Burke – sit at bistro table at an outdoor café with plans for Elizabeth Burke’s birthday and small talk drifting in the air. The hand of Peter Burke lingers, his fingers mild and tender over the wrist of Neal Caffrey, his thumb glancing underneath, to graze upon the palm, to measure the pulse of the man. It is a blessing and a revelation all at once. Neal Caffrey smiles in one instant and screams the next._

_With a chance look to the side, Neal Caffrey sees the car careen out of control as the driver lurches over the steering wheel, as the world collides and collapses, as the shattering of life and loves becomes one. The last thing Neal Caffrey remembers is shouting out to his love, is jumping in the path of the vehicle, is something smashing against his face._

*oOo*  
She rests a hand on his shoulder. His long form lies quiet in the bed, a statue of living tissue and she reminds herself Peter is still alive. He is solid and strong; he is there. She has come to depend on him as he is the wall of her house, the structure of how she lives bound by the sinews, muscles, and bones of him. The vessels that feed him, the heart that pumps within him plays the rhythm of her life. She cannot see the composition of each day, the drum beat of life without him by her side, holding up the world, holding out the world, keeping her safe.

She keeps vigil by his side. As the wife of an FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Burke sees it as her duty, knows it as her sacrifice, feels it drain every last breath from her, but she stays. She remains because if he contains the walls of their life together, she makes up the foundation. Stalwart and solid, she follows the corridors in the hospital as if they are assigned marching routines. She listens as the doctors report his progress, she drinks the stale coffee and eats the dry sandwiches from the cafeteria. She lets Diana squeeze her hand and smiles up at Hughes. She gathers her pieces and glues them together because the foundation cannot crack, it cannot give way under the weight of pressure.

Somewhere the clock ticks and it occurs to her the day has shifted, moved into the next and her husband is still with her. Even after the surgery to remove the ruptured spleen, the car accident that smashed into her normal day, wrenching away her predictable day brought her to this new place. She occupies the place and time with her husband as he sighs and comes to a lighter sleep.

Left alone, she rises and waits a moment to see if Peter will awake any further. He does not, though his sleep is soft and mellow. He rests without disturbance. She huffs out a breath, straightens her day old blouse and wishes she had on more sensible shoes. Nothing’s to be done about that now. Running shoes would not have gone with her skirt yesterday. She pats Peter’s shoulder, leans over and kisses him and then leaves.

Finding the nurses’ station, Elizabeth peers over the high wall of the desk and waits for one of the nurses to notice her. A round, older lady turns and smiles at her. Her face is well worn, like old comfortable clothes, and her eyes are a muddy brown.

“I’d like to know the status of a patient?” Elizabeth colors as she realizes it has been more than fifteen hours since the accident, since she heard anything about Neal. She hadn’t disregarded Neal during that time, she would never do that to one of their family, and Neal is part of their family. She’d heard from Hughes a bit on his progress, his injuries, but hadn’t heard anything lately.

“Name?”

“Neal Caffrey,” Elizabeth states. She surveys the quiet hospital, and notes that the clock reads a little after five in the morning. She’d been granted special privilege to stay with her husband because of his FBI status.

“Relation?”

She startles back and says, “Excuse me?”

“What is your relationship to the patient?” The nurse, her name is Patty, smiles again, but it holds no light.

“He’s-.” Elizabeth stops. What is the answer? My husband’s charge? My husband’s consultant? My friend? He’s part of our family? We’re a trio; you don’t get one without the other two? When he was on the run, we felt splintered? He’s our lover? “He’s my husband’s partner.”

“Partner?”

Elizabeth lifts her chin and goes up on her toes, which is nearly impossible in the heels she’s wearing, to get a glimpse of the computer screen. Patty turns the screen away from her. “My husband is Special Agent Peter Burke. He’s in room 221. They were in an accident together today – no, yesterday. A car hit the outdoor café?” She’s hoping some of this might jog a response, a positive one.

“So, no relation to the patient?”

“No, but-.”

“I can’t give you any information on the patient,” Patty frowns. “According to HIPAA rules, I cannot release his medical information to you without express permission from the patient.”

“Could you ask him?”

Patty reads through the files blinking on the screen. “That is going to be impossible.”

“Why? Is he okay? Is he alive?” She sees the nurse hesitate and works on that with a plea. “Please, just tell me if he’s alive, okay?”

Patty nods. “He’s alive.”

“Okay, do you have any other information, anything you can give me?” Elizabeth says as she pulls her cell phone out. She needs to get in touch with Hughes, or Diana, or Jones. Someone must be in line to take care of Neal’s medical issues if he’s unconscious or Peter is out of commission. “Is he conscious?”

“Please ma’am, I’m not allowed to give you any information on his status,” Patty says and then a short alarm sounds on her monitor. She peers down on the screen and looks back up at Elizabeth. “Did you say your husband is in 221?”

“Yes?”

“There’s an emergency.”

*oOo*  
_The car wavers in the road, leaping over the curb, crashing through tables and chairs. The chair launches over and in an arc flies toward him. There’s never enough time to duck, to get out of the way, there’s only enough time to push Peter out of the way. The full impact of the chair hits him against the side of his jaw. The pain blasts through him as if he’s been torn to a million pieces, fractured and broken. He doesn’t realize it but the car continues. It hits him propels his body over the side of it and he feels his head crack against the concrete. The world spins, the day darkens, and he welcomes it. It takes what seems like hours for him to lose consciousness though he keeps inviting it in._

_Turning his throbbing head, Neal sees Peter crushed underneath a load of tables and a streetlamp post. His eyes are dull and weak. There is no spirit there, there is no recognition. Neal realizes he’s looking at a dead man right before he’s finally captured by the darkness._

*oOo*  
He lies in the bed but refuses to latch onto this reality, this pain. If he allows it to, it will swallow him up, swallow him whole. The bruising, throbbing feeling reaches up with tendrils from his jaw into his eye sockets, pounds through his eyeballs and echoes into his sinuses. The distinct taste of blood flavors the back of his palate. He tries to cough but his mouth is stuck, frozen, and immobile.

He gulps down the taste and nearly gags as his sinuses drip again and more blood pools in the back of his throat. Trying to keep the panic on low happens to be one of the skills of a confidence man. Never let them see you sweat or worry or in pain.

He faces the truth of the matter with a detachment even Mozzie would be proud of. His face feels like several bullets shattered it, he can’t open his mouth, and the pain is dizzying and is threatening to make him sick. He has only one choice.

He opens his eyes.

The light beckons morning or whispers to the night. The world stands at the precipice of dawn or twilight, Neal cannot tell. He pushes past the pain which seems to be a feat in and of itself and assesses his current situation. He tries to lift his head but that just causes a wave of nausea and pain to shoot through his skull and burst in his sinuses. He issues a groan and shifts a bit to see the rest of the hospital room.

A hospital room is good considering the last thing he remembers is a wacked out car hitting him. A second of a flashback tells him his jaw was a victim and his right arm which would explain both the immobilized jaw and the cast on his right arm. The cast covers a portion of his shoulder and upper chest and extends down to his fingers. He wants to get a good idea of how it encases him so he moves his left arm and stops.

He’s locked to the bed with a handcuff.

A cold breath of air across his feet informs him that his feet are out of the thin blanket and that his anklet is gone, replaced by ankle chains to the bed. He pulls in a calming breath and considers whether or not he’s in a prison infirmary. This is a possibility. He needs to get in touch with Peter.

_Peter._

The image of Peter, collapsed in on himself, thrown under the tables and lamp post slams into him harder than the car. He recalls the loss, the lifeless focus from Peter as he lies there in the street.

_Peter is dead._

He’s back in the prison infirmary. He doesn’t call out, he can’t. He doesn’t try and beg for pain relief. Not now, not when Peter is dead. He thinks of Elizabeth with a cold corpse as her husband and an ex-felon as her lover – ex-lover. He wasn’t able to save Peter.

They are both gone, ghosts to him now. They are lost, his way his lost.

He is alone.

He welcomes the pain as he perches on the precipice of life and pain and sorrow.

*oOo*  
It takes Elizabeth half the day to settle enough to even think straight, to even figure out what the right questions to ask are. Why do doctors and nurses expect you to be ready to ask anything especially when your loved one is in immediate peril? She rubs at her forehead and combs a hand through her messed locks. She really needs to clean up, but the thought of leaving Peter even for a second paralyzes her now.

The emergency had ended with Peter back in the operating room to fix what the doctor called a bleeder. His happy little smile as he explained the situation made her want to punch his face and scrape her nails down his balding head. But she played the good little wife and smiled and thanked him for saving her husband. She is grateful that Peter is safe now, is only sleeping the sleep of the tired and exhausted.

Sitting next to the bed throughout the rest of the day keeps her close, keeps him safe. An irrational thought comes to her that maybe, if she moves, if she goes to get something to eat, Peter will slip away. He’ll die. She’ll lose the walls of her house, and her foundation will disintegrate. She remains by his side.

When he finally does awake in mid-afternoon he’s barely able to sit up and moans with the pain. She holds his hand and calls for the nurse. The nurse checks on the level of his pain, gives him another dose, and offers him ice chips. They will go easy on anything to eat today, maybe just clear broth and some juice.

Peter blanches at the juice but is able to fight down the clear broth before he starts to gag and choke. The nurse offers him Compazine and it helps the nausea. He’s not himself, he’s half in and out the entire time he’s supposed to be awake. Eventually, the medical staff let him drift off and tell Elizabeth things are positive. He’s doing well.

She purses her lips and bites back her words. This skeletal figment of a man is not her husband. His robust spirit is absent. What is left is barely there at all. So she sits again and waits.

*oOo*  
The next time Neal wakes up is to see a US marshal standing at the foot of his bed at parade rest. He isn’t sure if the officer expects Neal to jump up and salute, but that would be ridiculous so he just acknowledges him with his eyes.

The marshal reports to Neal that he is under their custody and that he is currently being treated by the staff at the hospital. Neal misses which hospital because he’s surprised that he isn’t in a prison somewhere.

“At this point in time, you will not be permitted any visitors,” the officer says. His smile reminds Neal of the Green Goblin and the Joker combined. It occurs to Neal that he’s mixing comic book villains but he doesn’t much care.

Neal nods as much as he can without eliciting spikes of pain to stab through his eyeballs. He tries to ask whether or not Hughes has been updated on the situation since Hughes he figures must be the next person in line to be responsible for Neal – he doesn’t let his mind wander to the reason why. A garbled groan issues from his sealed mouth.

“The doctor said once the swelling is down a bit you should be able to talk, though not much,” the officer says. “I am sorry about this, but it’s the rules. Do you have any family? We can allow family to see you.”

Images of Peter and Elizabeth invade his brain and he stifles the loss. He has no one. He shakes his head. He pushes a word out that sounds remotely similar to wawa. The officer leans down and asks him to repeat it.

“-aw-er.”

“Lawyer?” Got it in one, this guy is good. Neal rescinds the thoughts about his smile and notices his name is Wilson. “We can tell him about your situation. You’ll be permitted to see him. I’ll contact the FBI office and find out his name, okay?”

Neal closes his eyes and hears the man’s foot falls as he exits the room. The FBI office. Not Peter, the FBI office. It sticks deep in his throat and he chokes again, but it isn’t blood from his sinuses, it is bile from his empty belly. The thought of Peter dead in the morgue, of Elizabeth sitting colorless and hopeless by her husband’s side sickens him. He coughs and needs to vomit, but he can’t – the wires close his mouth. He tugs at the shackle on his wrist, can’t pull lose, and he has nothing to pick it. It is too late anyway, he can’t even call the nurse; the button is out of reach.

He vomits and he gags and he’s choking and suffocating. The world wobbles on the edge and pushes him from the cliff.

He falls.

*oOo*  
Peter comes aware in the middle of the morning as Elizabeth exits the small bathroom in his private hospital room. He knows he’s been out of some time. He just isn’t sure how long it has been. Vague memories of lying on the sidewalk filter through his mind. He tries to squeeze out what it means but he isn’t sure. Maybe he’s been shot? What was he doing when it all happened? For some reason he can only remember talking about Elizabeth’s birthday.

Elizabeth smiles at him. He notices she’s in jeans and a t-shirt which are not her normal every day wear. She almost always dresses up, just a bit. Her eyes wear fatigue but are touched with happiness as he awakes. She crosses the room and touches him lightly on his lips with her mouth. She smells of cool mint toothpaste and raspberry shampoo.

“Hey, hon,” she whispers and it feels like a secret between them.

He smiles at her and though it hurts a little bit, he leans up and grabs her to fully take her mouth with his own. They mix tongues and ease into a knowing kiss, the kiss of a couple together forever.

“Hon,” he breathes back at her. Her hands are on his face and quiet tears drip from her eyelashes. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “Nothing and everything. Oh Peter, I thought.”

He presses a fingertip on her lips. “Shush.”

She laughs a little and says, “Look at you.” She stands up and adjusts the blankets. “I’m just so happy I know one of you is okay.”

“One?” The moment of falling, of impacting the pavement comes back to him like a boulder slamming into him, crushing out his breath and life. He recalls seeing Neal leap to his feet, seeing Neal careening against the windshield of the car, seeing Neal’s blood face and horribly bent right arm. “One?” His voice loses all strength. “Neal? Neal’s dead? He’s dead?”

She grasps his thrashing arms and holds him still. “No, no, Peter, no.”

“What happened?”

“You both were hit by a car. The driver went into cardiac arrest and died instantly. The car went out of control.” Elizabeth strokes his arm. Shivers of fear still speed his heart, cause his skin to be extra sensitive. “You ended up with a few fractured ribs, a ruptured spleen, some internal bleeding they were able to repair.”

“And Neal?”

“Oh Peter,” she whispers and laces her fingers through his hand. “They won’t let me see him. I tried. I really tried. Hughes even tried, but the marshals are adamant. Only you or Hughes can see him. Mozzie isn’t around, out of town or something. He doesn’t even have Mozzie to visit him, his lawyer. June rampaged around the hospital. Jones and Diana are livid. He’s been all alone for all this time.”

He swallows back the emptiness, a hollow pit yawns open inside of him. Being in a relationship with Neal had seemed salacious and wonderful all at once. While he danced and touched and slipped his arms around his lover and his wife, he never considered the consequences of their lifestyle.

“How bad? Do you know?” he manages to get out.

“Hughes was able to finally tell me. A broken jaw, concussion, fractured arm and dislocated shoulder of the same arm.” She stops looks down at their locked hands and says, “He’s all alone, Peter.”

“Not for long,” Peter says as he grabs the side rails of the bed. She stumbles away but then is at his side immediately, trying to push him back. “No, not this time. Get me a chair or something. We are going to see him, now.”

He feels the heat and color drain out of his face as he struggles to get vertical. He allows himself a moment to steady the room, to put the brakes on the crazy circus ponies whirling around him. He swallows convulsively, grabs for the little kidney shaped bowl, and eases into the wheel chair Elizabeth procured. She transfers his intravenous bag to the chair but thankfully there’s no catheter.

Tugging a blanket from the bed, she tucks it around his waist and touches his forehead once. “Are you sure?”

He nods. He isn’t exactly sure he can say anything without having his side stretch in pain. Her grateful look is all the reward he needs.

*oOo*  
The pain becomes his mask. He lays open and alone for so long with only the occasional stranger to look over him, to care for him. He thinks he glimpsed Hughes at one point, but he cannot be sure. It was late and the drugs had fogged his brain. The one marshal, Wilson, who was nice to him the first day hasn’t made a second appearance. Most of the marshals, Neal thinks must be ex-Marines. They stand like that; give off that specific air and stance.

After he vomited they had to cut the wires, clean him up, and clean out the wounds in his mouth. He wakes up after the re-wiring and every tooth in his mouth aches, his sinuses drip and pool blood again. He doesn’t care; he stares out the small window to the brick of the building. He finds small patterns in the brick, draws in his mind the faces and places he’s been.

He makes up stories for the patterns and listens as the nurse checks on him, nods when it seems appropriate. The nurse turns on the television at one point, but Neal can’t reach the remote to turn it off or change the channel. He lets the stillness take over him, he lets time stop and he becomes his breath.

Listening to the cadence of it, Neal hears the muffled sound, the slight off moisture of his inhalation from the wires gluing him together. He exhales and his life deflates, disappears, grows smaller. He’s sure they will send him back to prison which he finds he’s fine with now. He recalls the moments sitting in his empty apartment, having missed Kate by two days. The void of his life at that moment comes back to visit him like a ghoul of the underworld. He lets the fierceness of his solitude take him, a shadow from hell to remove his life and hopes.

He thinks this is where he belongs, anyway. Life keeps trying to tell him that, regardless of his struggles against it.

A clang at the door signals the nurse’s arrival to check on him. He doesn’t shift in the bed or turn to see her. There is a short conversation at the door with the marshal currently assigned to guard him. He ignores it and stares out at the converging patterns of rain on the bricks. He hears the creak of the wheels of her cart and says nothing, just watches as the drips run rivers over and through the bricks lining the building outside his window. He hears her close the door.

His name is said, once and then twice. Weary and pained, he turns to look. For a moment, he feels like he’s looking at two different films at the same time superimposed. The world of his dark hospital room with the television droning in the background and the world where Peter, battered and bruised, hangs over him, gripping the bars of his hospital bed like a God damned angel from heaven or something.

Neal hikes in a breath and it sizzles with pain. “P-ter.”

“Damn it, Neal,” Peter says and reaches to touch him, but stops. “You look like the dead.”

His breath comes in short rasps, and he cannot work what little mobility of his jaw he has in order to form any coherent words. He cannot lift a hand to touch him, he cannot hold him. He groans against his restrains but nothing gives except his hold on his emotions.

“P-ter,” he says and then Elizabeth comes into his sight. “Eeel.”

“Sweetie,” she says and grips his left hand. “I’m so sorry, they wouldn’t let me in. Peter just about busted his stitches to yell at the marshal to let us in.”

The pain diminishes in degrees and for the first time Neal realizes the physicality of the pain came not from the crack in his jaw but from the separation of love. He wants to cry but the thought wrecks his already ruined sinuses, causes his face to ache with every pound of his heart.

Peter bends forward and he can see the pain and effort it takes for him to lean over Neal. He tries to push him away, tries to make it right so that Peter knows he doesn’t have to do this. With a tender caress, Peter lays his hand on the side of Neal’s face.

He scratches out, “Ba-d?”

“You’re beautiful, as always,” Peter whispers with a gentle touch of his lips to Neal’s mouth. Peter presses Neal to him, lining his face, tracing the tracks of tears down his face. “We’re here now, we’re here.”

Elizabeth rounds the bed and they make a cocoon around him. She looks to Peter and mouths a word to him. Peter nods.

She cradles Peter’s hand to the uninjured side of his face. She says in a low voice, “It’ll be all right now, it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine, hon. It’ll be good, hon.”

“-un?” Neal mimics but can’t get the word _hon_ to sound right.

They both nod and he lets out a great heave of a breath and the pain dissipates to a dull beautiful ache of a life worth living.

THE END  



End file.
